Do you read when writing?

This article: "How does what you read affect your writing, " by Laura Moss, quotes Stephen King, "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that," memoir, "On Writing." 

When writing new work I don't read because the story comes in a stream from my subconscious and all my senses are involved. Virgins came to me over several months and after overcoming weeks of fear and terror I would get up at night and write. After I sense that my subconscious is tapped or I have completed initial writing I read, research and read to learn about the visions or apparitions that have come to me.

With Virgins I had to do months of research and reading after the initial months of visions, apparitions and in fear of what I was seeing, feeling: all my senses on alert and involved. I even saw a therapist, called my best friend repeatedly, went overnight where my husband was staying when working out of town, sought help from my priest and got psychic readings, very scary readings, thought I was going nuts. Stuff I couldn't explain kept happening around me. My writing became so compulsive I wrote until the wee hours but was able to function during the day as if pumped up by adrenaline.

In the months and years that followed, I read all I could find online about the places, apparitions, ideas and to look and verify what seemed facts and most of them to my dread, where facts even the times before I was even born in this life. I started attending a writing group that went on for 5 years.

I wrote other stuff after awhile but the story of the Sylph kept me engrossed. Two years ago my husband and I went to Europe, of the two weeks we spent several days in Lalin Spain, a city near the Pontevedra Coast, where a lot of the book takes place. The experience felt supernatural to both of us.

Also, writing to me is a true labor of love, I have to edit and have others edit for me a lot because I was dyslexic and in my days as a youth that was not diagnosed correctly. English is not my birth language. I came to the U. S. when I was about nine, the first time. Also in college and in my occupation I had to read and write a lot. Like on this article, I check it myself with spell check and Grammarly and pass it by my husband to ensure it's not riddled with errors.

On competitions, from over the pond

How many of you like to enter competitions and or afraid to loose. Here is a short and good source:

We love writingcompetitions!

"Writing competitions can be a brilliant way of getting your writing noticed, but even if you don’t win or place highly, you can STILL make writing competitions work for you.

Writing contests can create deadlines to write to; provide themes or other inspiration; or help keep you focused! Writing short stories and short film scripts can help you hone your craft; plus writing feature screenplays and TV pilots can help you understand the marketplace, which is paramount in screenwriting in particular. However, there are SO MANY writing contests out there, where should you start? It’s hard not to get bamboozled!! Which ones are “worth it”???
So, as Devon Writers’ free gift to you, we have handpicked 25 writing contests* that we feel are particularly good. We broke them down into 3 sections:
1) Writing contests and schemes we at Devon Writers have personally been involved in as judges.
2) Local writing contests that take place in Devon and The South West of England (we *are* Devon Writers, after all!).
3) Other writing competitions and schemes of note.
So you can feel confident about entering the contests in this PDF!"

Proud to post an editorial on Cuba by J. C. Weeks

GOP DECRIES NORMAL CUBAN RELATIONS

So Republicans think Cuba does not deserve normal relations with our country.

Remember Vietnam? That fight (1960 – 1975) was to prevent communism from dominoing through Southeast Asia and eventually the world. Over 47,500 young American lives were wasted in that ‘crusade’.

The United States re-established diplomatic relations with Vietnam (still a self-declared communist republic) and reopened the U.S. Embassy there in 1995. The U. S. is one of Vietnam’s five major trade partners, there is no tourism restriction imposed by U. S. or Vietnamese law on U. S. citizens (over 400,000 a year). Oh, and no ‘domino effect’ ensued as a result of Vietnamese re-unification.

Now let’s look at Cuba. Beginning at the end of the Spanish-American War (1898) the United States held sway over Cuban autonomy and economics until Castro took power in 1959. The

U. S. first endorsed Castro but then reversed when he declared Cuba a Communist Republic. In reality, the only ones affected by this take over were organized crime and financiers who owned Cuba’s tourist infrastructure.

None the less, President Eisenhower authorized the training and arming of Cuban expats living in Florida for an invasion to topple the Castro regime. In 1961, the Kennedy administration oversaw this invasion, but did not logistically support the incursion which crumbled and withered in 3 days. In this conflict U. S. military combat deaths incurred was 5.

A year later in 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis loomed its ugly head and Kennedy set the U. S. military in motion to block Russian missile deliveries to the island. No actual combat ensued, however, 1 reconnaissance flight pilot was shot down and died in the crash.

The Cuban system has survived all U. S. imposed sanctions and most of my 67+ years on this planet. All other nations have long since lifted what sanctions they had imposed and trade with Cuba readily. Cuba’s tourist trade is doing well with Canadians and Europeans. Cuba’s literacy rate is 99% and its doctors are considered to be among the best in the world by the World Health Organization. Cuban doctors were some of the first international medical teams to go to Africa to help contain the Ebola outbreak.

Let’s compare…

Both countries are still socialist, both have not fomented the ‘communist domino effect’, both are not empowering international terrorism, both do not harbor any desire to become a ‘nuclear nation’, both do not seek to illegally grow their nation by seizing land of other nations or ignore claims of other nations to lands near said nation.

The only difference here is the number of U. S. military lives lost so Vietnam could remain socialist and become a U. S. trade partner with full diplomatic affiliation.

With Cuba the U. S. only incurred total combat deaths of 6 military personnel. Republicans seem to think Cuba is some great menace. If that were the case, how come we only lost 6 in combat? After all, Vietnam was going to ‘domino’ the world with socialism and we threw away over 47,000 lives to prevent it. Do Republicans think we are 46,995+ lives short of Cuba being worth normalization of relations? Perhaps that’s why they want our military to stay in the Middle East, the U. S. body count isn’t high enough yet to warrant it.

Cuba is no more a threat to the United States than Vietnam was. Republicans get over it, if Cuban cigars and rum are a threat, I’ll live with the danger.

Editorial by, J. C. Weeks

      

Prose about our travels: Loving Me Gently

Loving Me Gently

Santiago De Compostela, photos of the university

When we visited Santiago De Compostela, the university was closed, so we were not able to go into the building. The university is on top of a hill overlooking the beautiful and historic town of Santiago De Compostela.

International students information: http://www.usc.es/en/perfis/internacionais/